


The only sound is the overflow

by Cartonsofcartoons



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hufflepuff Harry Potter, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Peggy-sue, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2018-10-13 19:01:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10519878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cartonsofcartoons/pseuds/Cartonsofcartoons
Summary: It was his second time dying. And soon after, it was his second time coming back to life.Somehow, he was still alive.And he was living his life all over again





	1. Chapter 1

_~_

 

_His second time dying reminded Harry of the time the Dursleys had been forced to take him with them on ‘vacation’ one summer. They’d gone to a lake, Vernon taking Dudders away to do some fishing while his Aunt shooed him off, telling him to get out of her sight._

_He’d fallen into the lake then. Dropped off a high ledge and ended up a good few feet under the water surface._

_He’d felt his feet kicking, sluggish, but kicking nonetheless, only he wasn’t moving. He could see his arms reaching up, grasping as if trying to clutch air only it was so far out of his reach. It had been beautiful under the water in a way, in a wholly terrifying way. Mostly though, he remembers how quiet the world had gotten. Quieter than he had ever been in his cupboard even when he was all alone. Quieter than in his dreams after the green light._

_The quiet came back to him when he died again._

 

* * *

 

This was not the death he had expected. Voldemort had been defeated, Harry was happily married and had three wonderful kids, four really because Teddy was nothing if not his own. He was an Auror, he was alive, he was happy.

 

But then, it wasn’t all good.

 

He was an Auror, yes, but an Auror who spent most of his time saving witches and wizards from muggles. Voldemort was defeated but the threat that had risen in his stead was probably worse. His children were all grown up and in various other parts of the world, unwilling to fight in this new war. And his wife...

 

His wife he had found with her legs up in the sky, fucking Dean on their marital bed. His wife had poisoned him so he couldn’t divorce her and take the money, dosing him with something slow acting all so she could tell him exactly how much she _hated_ him, how she had only ever wanted his money. She had watched him die with bright eyes, looking more alive in his final moments than she had ever looked before. It was the last barb he had gotten in, mouth stiff and unmoving but mobile enough in his rage to whisper one last thing.

 

_“You didn’t even have enough soul for Tom to take.”_

 

And she had shrieked then and even though he felt the darkness creeping into his vision felt his heart give one last pump, he had died with a smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

_The water rushed over him into him. He was all at once, scared, tired and at peace._

_Death had come for its Master. But it could not keep him for long._

 

* * *

 

There was no King’s Cross station this time around. Instead he stood in the doorway of Grimmauld Place, stripped of everything, even Walburga Black’s portrait. It was dark, it was dank. The hall seemed to stretch on forever in its bareness, a kind of space that Harry hadn’t thought it could have.

 

Ah, but then he was dead after all. It wasn’t real, this was just the form the crossroads took for him. He walked into the house on quiet feet. Even when he stepped on that one floorboard, the one that always creaked, it made no noise and he was convinced with every step he took that this was it, this was the end. With trembling hands he turned the knob to enter the basement kitchen where he’d spent so much time with Sirius. Before he could open it he looked down and his bare toes (why were they bare?) twitched, bathed in the light emanating from under the door. Strange that, the kitchen even lit up to the highest had never been so bright. With one shuddering breath (although he supposed there was no such thing as breathing for him anymore) he opened the door.

 

* * *

 

_The water swirled all around him._

_The quiet was gone as he heard the beating of his heart behind his ears._

_A shadow crossed over the surface of the water. He couldn’t see who it was but he knew they were looking straight at him._

_Was it Vernon? Was this it then? Would he put his hand down under the surface and hold Harry there until he stopped kicking? Was this how they would get rid of the freak and have their perfect life back again?_

_A hand reached down into the water and Harry kicked desperately trying to get away but to no avail. It hooked around his shoulder, under his armpit and in one smooth move, heaved him out of the depths._

_Harry lived._

 

* * *

 

“-Potter , Harry.”

 

“ _Potter_ , did she say?”

 

“ _The_ Harry Potter?”

 

“Mr Potter!” McGonagall said. But she was dead.

 

Then again, so was he.

 

Right?

 

It was the push that made him think otherwise. He stumbled over his own two feet but caught him against a table. The edge struck his hand hard and a line of red emerged. He looked up and away from the blooming cut and his eyes swept over the group seated at it. The diminutive duelling champion whose grave he had left with an iris not two weeks past, the hulking half giant they had lost to a muggle lab experiment, whose body was never found, only the skeleton, the headmaster he had named his youngest for, the hook-nosed man who had given the same his middle name and the vessel of the Dark Lord Voldemort.

 

And it was the pain that rang through him, starting from his scar that convinced him he was alive.

 

He was _alive_.

 

 And it seemed he was living his life again.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_~_

 

_“Death’s favourite! Ah, I never thought I would get to sort you.”_

_“Death’s favourite does seem to be a title you earn later in life.” Harry agreed. “Although that doesn’t quite make sense.” Not to Harry at least. Why would Death send him back to live if Harry was his favourite?_

_“I see,” The Hat said. That was the thing about a mind reading hat. It didn’t need to be told anything. “You think a favoured one is to be kept close.”_

_“But then I suppose I wouldn’t know what an amorphous entity such as Death would think.”_

_“No? Did you tie Teddy to your apron strings and keep him close forever then?”_

_And that was the problem with mind reading hats. They knew things that had gone unsaid for decades, that Harry had pretended were untrue._

_Teddy was **his** in a way James, Albus and Lily never were._

_“There are worse fates than second chances.”_

_“Perhaps if I had a better life to lead.”_

_“Ah, but the only one that decides what kind of life you have, is you yourself, Mr Potter.”_

**_It is our choices , Harry, that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities._ **

_As a child, Harry had needed to hear that, taken it as gospel._

_As an adult it had made him laugh wildly._

_Perhaps the hat knew of what went on in the heads of eleven year olds, perhaps it knew what went on in the head of Dumbledore. But it knew nothing of the day to day choices people made and how they snowballed into chaos._

_It did not know **life**._

_“Aren’t we an odd pair then Mr Potter, one knows no life and the other knows no death.”_

 

* * *

 

Whispers grew in the hall, rising, rising as Harry Potter sat under the Sorting hat’s brim. It was taking long, already the Weasley twins were taking bets on how much longer it would go on and what house the Boy-Who-Lived would be in.

 

The sudden laughter that Harry Potter burst into, quelled the hall into silence. It was an odd sound, especially when it came from the tiny slip of an eleven year old, a low raspy chuckle with a resonant quality to it. The sound sent shivers down many spines and had Albus Dumbledore curling his fingers against the wooden grain of the chair, pressing his arm down slightly so that he felt the knobbly length of the Elder wand press against the muscle, still encased within the wand holster he had attached to his wrist.   

 

Ten minutes had passed and yet no house name had been shouted out.

 

Hogwarts waited.

 

* * *

 

_“Pleasantries aside, I do have a job to do.” The Sorting hat sighed, “But I have my work cut out for me.”_

_Adults were rarely as easy to classify as children and Harry hadn’t been easy to sort the first time round either._

_“Do I choose once again?”_

_“You remain brave, you remain loyal, you remain cunning and you remain thirsty for knowledge. Once again your choices will decide your fate.”_

_What could Harry choose? Gryffindor again? No, not again, it would feel too much like a lie._

_Ravenclaw, then? Hufflepuff? Or perhaps Slytherin as the hat had suggested before?_

_“Choose wisely young Mr Potter, second chances are rarely bestowed by Fate and they always have a reason.”_

_“But I don’t know the reason.”_

_“No one ever does, but we do what we can with the hand we are dealt.”_

_“And when the cards aren’t to our liking?”_

_“Change the game.”_

_Change the game. Perhaps he could that._

_“Have you made your choice?”_

_“You know I have”_

_“Very well then-“_

 

* * *

 

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

 

A pin might have dropped and for once, the whole of Hogwarts would have heard its sound. At a table bedecked in yellow and black, a young man scowled at the shock they all displayed. Whispers began anew and Gryffindor hurled accusations at the house of the badger. Potter was meant to be theirs, they claimed. Hufflepuff must have cheated somehow, they said. The duffers trying to get some glory, they sneered.

 

And one Cedric Diggory ignored the lot and led his house into a loud applause. Absently Potter walked to the House table, slow and lethargic and sniggers came from the Slytherin table. Lazy, they laughed, no wonder he’s in Hufflepuff.

 

Cedric watched the boys silent march. He saw the glazed unseeing eyes, the hands still and unmoving at his side, every step of his feet measured and heavy, like he was being anchored to the ground by chains, as if the Earth itself was unwilling to let him go. When he sat down next to him Cedric felt the movement, the oddly loud thunk of the tiny body finally seating itself.

 

He sat so still, it unnerved Cedric. Where all eyes had turned back to the Sorting Hat, he stared straight ahead.

 

“I’m Cedric,” He introduced himself suddenly, desperate to break the spell that fallen over them.  It felt like time had slowed down for them, a cocoon growing, starting from Potter and covering them all. Cedric could feel his own arms falling onto the table, strangely heavy.

 

And as slowly, as steadily as it had descended upon them, it receded just as sharply. Potter turned to look at him, a jerking motion that looked painful and the glazed over look in his eyes had turned to shock.

 

“Cedric,” He whispered and Cedric shivered at the almost devotion in the younger boy’s eyes. “Y-You’re young?”

 

“Well, I’m not old,” Cedric joked and for the briefest of moments Potter’s face was transformed as utter joy came over it. Had Cedric not been watching him so closely he wouldn’t have seen what he saw.

 

But Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, mouthed the words ‘You’re alive’ and Cedric shivered as an icy feeling rushed through his body, as if a ghost had walked through him.

 

* * *

 

_“Professor Trelawney?” Cedric asked the Divinations professor. He had found her stumbling around in the courtyard smelling of sherry and talking to the trees as if they were McGonagall, just before the Feast. His friends had gone ahead but he stayed back to help the batty old professor Years of helping his mother herd his drunk father to bed after Ministry balls had taught him exactly what to do. But the touch of his hand had her stiffening and she turned slowly to face him, unseeing but somehow more animated, more **alive** than Cedric had ever seen her._

_She sighed softly, but when she spoke her voice was harsh and otherworldly,_

**“What once was pure gold, is marred now by lead**

**Fate’s darling returns, back from the dead**

**Once saved by love, betrayed by the same**

**Death’s Master returns, not martyred in vain**

**His knight takes his place, clad in gold and night**

**Lost once to death, saved by Fate’s changed design**

**The Darkness, it writhes and changes its shape**

**Rising from the depths to fit as His armoured cape**

**The grey shadow grows long, when Night and Light are wed**

**What once was pure gold, is marred now by lead”**

_“Professor?”_

_“J-just because you do not have the Sight, Minerva-” She slurred and Cedric groaned, trying his best to forget what she had said even as it replayed over and over again in his head and directed her back to the castle gently._

_People said the maddest thing when they were drunk._

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

~

 

 

Over the years, the _many_ years despite what his youthful face belied, Harry had gotten used to eyes on him. He had stopped walking away and trying to become one with the shadows, trying to get away from the shrieks of his name tinged with that awful devotion that reminded him of Bellatrix, had stopped stuttering when someone came up to him to violently shake his hand in thanks.

 

A head held high, a polite but distant smile and an aloofness that came from practice kept them all at bay much better than any niceties did.

 

But apparently it only worked as long he was an adult. An adult who had spent a considerable time in the public’s eye rather than a child who had been hidden away for ten years. Harry laid down on the bed that he had claimed, the one closest to the door and closed his eyes to feign sleep. All along the way there, he had been pelted with questions from the rest of his classmates, questions he didn’t answer. He didn’t bother to unpack his truck, didn’t bother to introduce himself to his classmates, didn’t bother with anything. He simply closed his bed hangings, shot an absent spell to keep them that way and tried to breathe.

 

It didn’t feel real. Not really. How could it be?

 

But...Cedric? Cedric Diggory not Cedric Stewart, Cho’s son.

 

His mind would have never come up with that. For all that Cedric’s murder had shaped him, for all the guilt he felt for it, Harry hadn’t really thought of him in years. Not when there had been so many others to remember and grieve as well, not when there was so much to be done.

 

So, it _was_ real. But Harry didn’t want it to be. He didn’t want to relive the years building up to a war. The novelty, the fascination of this world of magic had carried him through those years but he didn’t have it in him to do this again. Didn’t have it in him to play along to the whims of an old man he used to respect but didn’t anymore. Couldn’t pretend to be wilfully blind to all the political machinations around him. Couldn’t pretend to be a child when he’d spent so long as a parent.

 

This was going to be difficult.

 

* * *

 

_He wasn’t drowning anymore, only floating on its surface. Drifting with nothing to direct but the currents._

_It wasn’t water he was floating in, though. He couldn’t tell what it was but **It** felt familiar. **It** made his soul sing. **It** slid over his skin and he sighed at the burst of bliss. **It** surrounded him on all sides, hands forming out of it as it was an ichor to be moulded, hands that he felt embrace him, and bursts of colours passed through his being making him gasp. He could not see them but he tasted them somehow. Red, black, bronze, yellow, gold, silver, green and blue dancing on his tongue._

_The arms held him close and something brushed against his forehead, over the lightning scar that had only ever given him pain but now felt like sparks running under his skin. His hair rustled and his ear tingled as if a breath had passed close to it._

**_Poor darling_ ** _, said **It** although no words were used, **Lose yourself to me and I shall take your pain away**_

_Another hand settle down over his shoulder, one so different from the ones that still encased him that he writhed at the suddenness. It felt so real._

_Too real._

**_You coddle him_ ** _, said the new presence and it felt odd, like an amused, raspy bark that made his stomach tighten in remembrance_

_(Sirius? Is that you?)_

**_It is time to wake up little Master. There is much to be done._ **

 

* * *

 

Cedric woke early as he always did. It was an ingrained habit, waking up early to get the eggs out of the henhouse as he always did. There were always chores to be done back at home and it would take a while to get back to the almost lazy times that Hogwarts ran by.

 

When he was a first year he had thought it was weird. Wasn't school supposed to be tedious and hard work? But compared to being back home under his mother’s strict watch it was easy. The many long essays that they had to write were the only real hard work they did but even that wasn’t too bad as long as you didn’t put it off.

 

Here, in Hogwarts, house elves turned down the bed, made the food cleared the plates, cleaned the castle. There was nothing for him to do.

 

But still Cedric woke.

 

There wasn’t usually anyone awake at so early a time. The sun wasn’t out yet, wouldn’t be for a good hour.

 

So the glow from the Common Room confused Cedric.

 

The fireplaces wouldn’t be lit until five, Cedric knew this, so close to the kitchens the Hufflepuff dorm didn't need the same heat that the rest did in their draughty towers and their cold dungeons. And the glow was unlike any he had seen from a fireplace. A soft white light, almost like a large Lumos, tinged with the barest hints of blue. It caused long shadows to fall into the passageway where Cedric still stood, wary but he didn’t know why he felt so cautious.

 

The shadows danced as if the light was flying about. It was in one such movement that he caught the shadow of what looked to be a messy pile of hair sticking over the arm of one of the plush chairs in the room. With slow cautious steps Cedric stepped into the Common room, keeping as quiet as he could.

 

Only to stop in his steps at the sight in front of him.

 

Harry Potter was draped over a chair, legs thrown over the side of an armrest, head hanging off the other. His eyes were closed, his left arm tucked over his stomach while his right reached out above. And the skinny, bruised fingers held a ball of light on them. The shadows continued their dance as the ball of light was moved from the tips of one fingertip to the next and then back again.

 

Wandless magic, by an _eleven_ year old, used for a bit of fun in what looked to be a mindless, automatic habit. Like the pipe his father smoked when he was thinking, like the automatic way his mother lit up the lights in his room to wake him up.

 

Harry Potter sighed, his eyes opening and Cedric took to the shadows of the passage once again. He lobbed the ball of light at the fireplace with a flick of his fingers and the second it hit, a roaring fire lit it up and the room was filled with a toasty warmth, as if the fire had been burning away for hours and not merely seconds.

 

Cedric wanted to walk up to the boy, ask him just _what_ he was doing, _how_ in Merlin’s name he was doing it but something held him back and he walked back to his room on silent feet.

 

‘ _Not yet,’_ said a voice in his head, rough and low, so unlike his own he knew he should ask someone to see if he had been possessed. Instead he sank back onto the plush mattress of the bed and went back to sleep, a sudden drowsiness taking over him.   _‘There is still time left for this.’_

 

_‘Sleep’_

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Albus Dumbledore’s foot tapped uneasily as he waited in the staffroom. No one would see it of course, his long robes making sure of that, any shift would be attributed to the strange psychedelic designs that covered them.

 

It was a week to Halloween, and as they did every year, the staff would be meeting to discuss the usual decorations, food etc. Severus and Bathsheda would protest the muggle-ization of their holidays, Severus in favour of tradition, Bathsheda in favour of her magic rites. Severus’ was a token protest but Bathsheda wouldn't be happy at all, and they would probably be angrier for what he was suggesting.

 

One by one the professors trickled in and took their places on their chairs, the long term staff having customised theirs while Quirrell sat on the plain striped one with the spring that dug into the back.

 

Once they were all seated Dumbledore cleared his throat, mentally girding himself for the protests that were sure to be shouted out the second he made his announcement.

 

“My dear fellows, I wonder if perhaps we might consider toning down the usual Halloween festivities.”

 

Pandemonium prevailed.

 

“Honestly Dumbledore, you know how important this date is to us, to the Wizarding world,” Minerva chided, “The day the war ended is not meant to be glossed over like it’s some frivolous thing like Valentine’s day!”

 

Severus beside her snarled silently. He had been pushing to have Sabbath observed every year since he’d taken the post of Potions Master at Hogwarts and having Minerva somewhat on his side this time around must have been vindicating for the young man. Their joint sentiments were echoed by the staff who began voicing their own protests vociferously.

 

“Silence,” Albus said, doing his best to be heard over the cacophony of multiple voices shouting at him without resorting to a sonorus.  They quietened down but the doubts that had been plaguing him for the past few weeks only grew louder. Was he losing his people? Were they beginning to see the cracks in his composure to feel so at ease with lobbing these word at him? People doubting wasn’t something he was unused to, certainly people like Malfoy questioned him all the time but his own people? Did he seem powerless now that...well it didn’t matter. There was nothing to be done about it. “I bring this up because the incident three weeks ago has me concerned.”

 

“W-What incid-d-dent?” Quirrell asked but the look in the man’s eyes belied his anger.

 

“The day the war ended in truly memorable for all of us, in particular for young Harry. You might remember that it’s also the day that his parents were murdered and he was orphaned.” The silence that followed bolstered Dumbledore’s confidence. They understood the gravity of the situation now. “His state of mind concerns me especially considering that the young Mister Potter was fished out of the Black lake by The Giant Squid.”

 

 

* * *

 

_Cedric sighed in his seat. It was double transfiguration, which Hufflepuff shared with Gryffindor. The twins, Fred and George, had turned their teapot into a nine layered chocolate torte instead and were arguing with McGonagall that they simply heard it wrong and it was completely accidental and that feeding the torte to Mrs Norris as she passed by their classroom wasn’t deliberate at all, why would they possibly want to hurt the poor cat and ‘Minnie we just thought it was you in your animagus form passing judgement on our transfiguration, honest!’_

 

_As McGonagall began talking about the laws of Transfiguration and how they most certainly didn’t apply to food, Cedric tuned it out and looked out the window instead. It was a surprisingly nice day with a good wind and some sunshine, cloudy but not too cloudy and the shadows that the wispy clouds cast on the gleaming golden surface of the Black Lake were quite beautiful. It was the perfect day for a dip in the cool waters._

 

_Clearly, someone else thought that too as Cedric spotted a little figure walking towards the lake. He couldn’t make out much of it but the short darkish hair, the student too young and tiny for him to tell if it was a girl or a boy. A sense of alarm grew in Cedric’s mind as he watched the little figures march. They kept on walking, through the bushes, over the grass, onto the pebbled shore, walked straight into the shallows and then into the depths and Cedric, shocked, watched as the tuft of dark hair disappeared under the surface._

 

_Cedric waited._

 

_Surely they would came back up to the surface?_

 

_Surely they hadn’t just walked to their death?_

 

_But the surface remained unbroken, evening out into its calm state with barely a ripple. He stood up in his seat, breathing wildly at the thought of what he had just seen. A bit of movement caught his eye and when the surface broke he gasped in relief ignoring his classmates’ concerned questions. But what rose to the surface was a scarf, black and yellow and just like that Cedric knew exactly who was it that had drowned themselves so calmly._

 

_“Professor McGonagall, Harry Potter just walked into the lake and hasn’t come for air!” He said, his wild eyes probability scraping his classmates. McGonagall simply frowned and twisted her mouth._

 

_“Mr Diggory if this is your idea of a joke--,” Cedric ignored it and ran out of the classroom in a rush, his classmates and McGonagall following. When he reached the lake’s edge he saw others who had come out as well, a Ravenclaw and Gryffindor fifth year class whose classroom must have been facing the lake as well. They were accompanied by Professor Flitwick who had waded out quickly, asking the students where they’d seen the boy last and Cedric rushed in behind him, arms and legs working hard to take him there._

 

_He dived down to see if he could see Harry but the water was too dark. Beside him, a light shone, Professor Flitwick gesturing at him to go back up, his own head encased in the bubble head charm, his wand emitting the light of a lumos and Cedric remembered that morning all those weeks ago that had first brought Potter to his attention. When Cedric refused to surface, Professor Flitwick waved his wand and cast the bubble head charm on him as well. Breathing easier Cedric cats his own Lumos and pointed it in the other direction to hasten the rescue._

 

_They dove deeper only to be startled as a shadow moved in the periphery of the spotlight of Cedric’s wand. It was all the warning they got before a humongous grey tentacle came at them, clutching a pale, dazed Harry Potter in its curve. It passed them by quickly, hurling Harry out of the water and they followed. They treaded water, carrying Harry between the two of them and made their way out to shore, ignoring Harry’s mutters in favour of swimming back. Finally they made it,laying Harry out on the pebbled shore, shooing the more morbidly  curious students away._

 

 _‘I_ _t’s real, it’s real,’ Harry chanted softly, his eyes darting from one way to another until they finally landed on Cedric and then they stopped, riveted on him, ‘An unreality maybe, it can’t happen again, no sense, it doesn’t make_ **_sense_ ** _!’_

 

_“What doesn’t make sense?” Cedric asked as he helped Harry to the Hospital wing._

 

_‘How are we alive again, Cedric?’_

 

_“You’re beginning to sound like Trelawney there,” Cedric attempted to joke, realising the second that it left his mouth that Harry would have no idea who Trelawney even was. Instead of the confused look he was expecting though, Harry sharpened and his hand gripped Cedric’s wrist with a strength that was wholly unexpected._

 

 _“What did she say?” Harry asked, no,_ **_demanded_ ** _, and Cedric swallowed nervously. He had watched Harry discreetly for weeks now. The boy was soft spoken, wholly uninterested in the world as if he had just checked out of it all, lost in his thoughts in a way that reminded him of the Lovegood girl who lived nearby, only almost sinister._

 

 _He always seemed kind of fuzzy but now it was like he had been brought into focus, a picture that had been cleared up. Cedric looked into the green eyes and felt a twitch take up residence in his eye and suddenly remembered the time near the forest’s edge in the courtyard with Trelawney. Suddenly the memory played out clearly in his mind’s eye and Cedric was astonished that he could remember it so well. He was wrenched out of it as Harry dropped eye contact and rushed ahead, so_ **_alive_ ** _all of a sudden and all Cedric could do was follow._

 

_And as the throbbing behind his eyes stopped, Cedric wondered what exactly the Boy-Who-lived had done to make him remember it so visibly and why he hadn’t asked what he had remembered._

  


* * *

 

 

Severus looked at Dumbledore, hoping to convey his distaste for all this with his silence. Not that it would make much difference to Albus. Or would it?

 

Albus had been out of sorts for weeks now. Ever since he had woken up to find his wand missing one morning. He’d flown into a rage and worried incessantly which was what stood out to Severus. Oh, he understood well the attachment that they all had to their wands, it should have been like losing a limb.

 

 _Should_ have been. But it wasn’t. There was fear, worry, anger but no grief.

 

How could he not grieve the loss of his wand? And why was he worrying about it falling into the wrong hands? Wands were wands, they belonged first and foremost to only one person. As Ollivander said, the wand chose the wizard. The wizard had no part to play in the acquiring of it.

 

But then a lot of things about Albus’ reaction made no sense. Like the way he tore his way through all his belonging to look for the Potters’ special invisibility cloak. Severus knew about Albus’ plan to gift it back to the boy this Yule, had thought it was ridiculous to give a student an easy way to sneak around in the castle, especially Potter. He may not have been quite the spitting image of his father as Severus had expected but he had an odd aura to him, something borderline dark and while he wouldn’t use it to sneak up on innocent students to play pranks on them, he was certain to be up to no good with such a powerful object. It was sheer stupidity to give it to the child.

 

So it was probably good that Albus had been unable to find it.

 

Exactly how it had gotten lost or, if Albus’ suspicions were right, stolen from the headmaster’s office, was the true mystery here and Albus’ focus on the objects instead, was disconcerting.

 

And now as his fellow professors questioned Albus he could see the tinge of desperation on the Headmaster’s face. Minerva must have noticed as well as they both shared looks and began to defuse the situation the best they could.

 

“Albus, while your concern is merited, I have seen nothing after that point in Mr Potter that suggests any particular instability. The Hufflepuffs have rallied around him marvellously and we have seen quite a turnaround in Mr Potter’s behaviour in class.” Minerva’s words had Pomona puffing up with pride.

 

“Indeed, we have. Young Cedric in particular has taken up a vital role in Young Harry’s recovery. He’s been mentoring the boy and the results give me hope. In fact, I think it is a good strategy to apply for the rest of the students as well, having an elder student guide them through their first year in school.”

 

“He hasn’t shown any signs of having dark thoughts?” Albus inquired.

 

“Not as far as we can see, despite several instances where young Potter was conveniently placed to cause himself some harm he refrained and was most careful. In fact, he’s even stayed back to ask me about his parents on occasion, it didn't seem to be too sensitive a topic at all. He was rather glad to know of them.” Here Flitwick turned to Severus and he tensed, having an inkling of what was to come and not happy about it at all, “In fact, I was wondering if perhaps you would be alright if I steered him your way, Severus. It might do the boy some good to know of his mother.”

 

And that gut wrenching pain that accompanied the thought of Lily returned. If this was what the very thought of her reduced him to, what would he become if he was forced to spend hours trying to explain the unexplainable radiance that was Lily to her and Potter’s spawn?

 

“It seems her sister doesn’t have the kindest of words for poor Lily,” Flitwick continued and the full body flinch that accompanied the thought of Lily’s son only knowing of her what her petty ‘Tuney’ had to say was possibly worse than that. It was with a growing pallor that Severus nodded curtly at the Charms professor.

 

“Has he said just why he...did what he did?” Albus asked, apparently unable to find a suitable euphemism for 'tried to drown himself'.

 

Flitwick shrugged, which was strange in and of itself, and Severus realised he had been fairly subdued throughout this meeting. “I don’t like to talk of a student’s personal life but it seems like he hasn’t had the best upbringing, seemed to find magic and Hogwarts, his status, all of it to be quite difficult to believe.”

 

“Well then, since everyone seems to believe the boy to be well, we shall go on ahead with the Halloween celebrations as usual.”

 

They all hurried out of the place, quite glad to be away from what seemed to be mounting tension between McGonagall and Dumbledore. Severus waited to leave until the very last minute to leave and was treated to the dulcet tones of McGonagall reaming Dumbledore out, “I said, didn’t I? The worst kind of muggles, Albus!”

 

As her tirade continued Severus grimaced at the thought of having to put up with Potter’s spawn. Perhaps, solving the mystery of just why Albus’ wand and Potter’s cloak were distressing the headmaster. would be the balm to it.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

So, it was real. Somehow Harry had been given a second chance at life.

 

But _how_ ? And _why_?

 

It didn't make sense. But then Magic defied logic, after all. Things didn’t need to make sense, not in this world.

 

He wondered if this was the same world or perhaps an alternate universe. Perhaps in his old world he was dead, Ginny was rich. It wouldn’t do her much good though. After all, Harry was perhaps the only thing keeping a war with the Muggle world at bay.

 

And it was so strange the way it had all started. With Hermione being appointed as the ambassador to the Muggle ministry. They had thought that as a muggle born who was part of the golden trio, who was ever so powerful and who’d cared so much for creature rights that Hermione was the perfect choice.

 

They were very wrong.

 

Hermione had made the mistake of letting it slip that she was looking for her parents who were in Australia. And then gone on to elaborate to her allies that during the war she had had to Obliviate her parents of their memories of her and England and their dental practice and sent them away to Australia for their own safety, back when she was merely seventeen.

 

And that had been the tipping point, the stick that had stirred the hornet’s nest. That she had done such a heinous thing as to take her parents’ agency away from them, their memories, their life’s work for the ‘greater good’, that she had that much power at such a young age and suffered no consequences for it and been _lauded_ for it instead…

 

Well, it didn’t take a genius to know that the Muggles weren’t going to stand for that.

 

The mistrust had grown in leaps and bounds after that revelation. Every conversation monitored to make sure that the wizards weren’t getting away with controlling their MP’s and the Prime Minister. They had demanded to know of every muggleborn so that their parents might be protected in case their children decided to mess with their minds. Hermione’s story was repeated to those parents causing loving home environments to turn into cautious ones that resembled Harry’s own childhood environment far too much.

 

And thus he had been forced to step in.

 

It had taken a lot of damage control, ceding many demands to the Muggle ministry but he had managed to rebuild their relationship to a relatively acceptable level. But they still refused to deal with anyone other than him because he remained the only wizard who had of his own volition asked if they would be more comfortable if he came without his wand.

 

It had always struck him as odd. Since the war, since he’d won the allegiance of the Elder Wand he hadn’t needed a wand to do magic. His comfort at giving up his wand had less to do with assuaging their fear and more to do with the fact that he didn’t _need_ it. And the thing was, they knew that. They knew it was symbolic but they trusted him a far sight more than they did the others.

 

All these years and Harry just didn’t understand people. People were strange, they made less sense than magic did.

 

Harry sighed from where was sat in the hospital wing. He was alone but with a slew of monitoring charms on him. He had confirmed that this was really happening with his incident in the lake but it had its consequences. Now, he was labelled as being at risk and he was going to be watched carefully.

 

When he looked out of the window he saw the Forbidden Forest, that battleground of his final fight with Voldemort. He remembered it like yesterday. The relief of it all, that Voldemort was gone and would never return, that the war was over, that they could finally live in peace.

 

He had been naive.

 

Smoke billowed from Hagrid’s cottage suddenly and caught his eye. Was it that time already, Harry wondered, did Hagrid have the dragon egg? His first year at Hogwarts, the first time around that is, had been many years ago for him. He didn’t remember the events as well as wished and had probably changed a great deal many of them anyway.

 

He was in Hufflepuff this time around, he wondered how Dumbledore and Snape were taking it. Was Snape surprised that James Potter’s son had wound up in Hufflepuff? Was Dumbledore shifting his plans around or was Hufflepuff ‘Light’ enough for his likes?

 

It had taken a long time for Harry to recognise and accept the Headmaster’s manipulations. Partly because they were subtle but mostly because he didn’t want to. He didn’t like what it meant for him. How he’d pledged himself proudly as Dumbledore’s man through and through while the old fucker had been fattening him up for the slaughter at Voldemort's hand. While he’d been setting up little challenges for him, obstacle courses so that Harry could prove himself a perfect little warrior for the Greater Good.

 

And Harry had played right into the man’s hand. Dumbledore prodded him to jump and he threw himself into the air. He said walk to your death and Harry whispered to the snitch that he was going to die. Everything had to be so twisted with him, didn’t it? And Harry had twisted himself up to fit in. Dumbledore even died a martyr, even that bit of satisfaction was denied to Harry. The only thing he could use to content himself was that Dumbledore had never quite managed to use the stone to summon and apologise to his sister's ghost. It wasn’t much but it was all Harry had. Of course, he could change things this time around. Maybe fuck with Dumbledore’s mind a bit.

 

But it would be giving the old goat too much importance. He didn’t want that either, didn’t want to dedicate himself to ruining Dumbledore. It felt a bit childish, really.

 

Besides, there wasn’t much that he could use against the man. He had built up his legend so well that public humiliation was out of question. Even at his maddest the man was feared. The only way to get to him was to involve the Deathly Hallows.

 

He hadn’t thought about them in a while but then they were never the Deathly hallows to Harry. Where Ron and Hermione had kept up the narrative of the Death Stick, the Resurrection Stone and the Invisibility cloak, Harry had thought of them as Dumbledore’s wand, Voldemort’s horcrux ring’s stone and his dad’s cloak. From his seat near the window he could see the spot where he’d dropped the stone in another life after talking to his mum, dad, Sirius and Remus.

 

A part of him regretted that. He had let go of the stone easily enough back then when he thought he was to die soon. He had expected death and in it, to finally meet and be with the ones that had left him.

 

And then he had lived instead. That happened to him a lot.

 

A gasp tore him out of his thoughts. Harry pulled away to look at the source, Madame Pomphrey looking between the window and him with wide eyes and Harry rolled his own.

 

“I was bored and looking out the window, not planning on throwing myself out of it.” He said but she turned even paler.

 

“I think Mr Diggory will be staying here with us for a while.” She said and rushed out, but not before casting some very firm locking charms on all the windows.

 

Harry could only roll his eyes at the stupidity of wizards. They could lock the windows all they wanted but he could still take a chair to the glass and shatter them if he wanted. Honestly. He clenched his hand and started at the feel of something in his fist. Laying out his hand he found himself holding the Resurrection Stone in his hand.

 

It floated up above his palm before slamming into the base of the Elder wand that had appeared out of nowhere as well, before gently floating back into his open hand. Harry’s finger grasped the hilt of their own accord and he jolted to find that instead of knobby wood he felt the silky material he _knew_ to be his dad’s invisibility cloak instead. It disappeared from sight even though Harry could feel it and a sudden burning sensation in his palm caught his attention. A triangle, a line and a circle formed on his palm in white, like a scar and the weight of the hallows was gone.

 

_Have you finally accepted your title, Master?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is set between the time Harry 'drowns' himself and Halloween.


	6. Chapter 6

~ 

 

 

There are reasons why Harry has never considered Master of Death to be a true title, an actual sort of magical power. It is simply this: he cannot possibly be the first person to have all three hallows.

 

At the end of the day Harry was just a man, one who had been raised in the muggle world his entire childhood, one that hadn’t known what the hallows were until he was seventeen. He had never even looked for them really, they had just sort of fallen into his lap. People like Dumbledore and Grindelwald had spent decades looking for them and they could not be the only people in the world looking for them. The tale was so old that it had turned to myth, in all those years, centuries, possibly even millennia, Harry could not be the only ‘Master of Death’. And if Master of death meant the things it meant for Harry, if it meant that these objects would never leave him then surely there could only be one Master of Death, the original one who never let them go?

 

It just didn’t make _sense_.

 

**_Still so human Master,_ **

 

The voice was amused. Absently Harry remembered what Ron had said all those years ago in second year

 

_“Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.”_

 

The voice laughed.

 

**_Poor, dear Master, so unwilling to believe yourself to be the exception to the rule._ **

 

Now it sounded fond, incredibly so. Harry had never had such affection directed at him, not without prompting or being in life or death type situations.

 

Harry got off his bed in the hospital wing and paced the length of the room once before coming to a grinding halt.

 

Fact 1: Harry was hearing a voice that implied that it was death.

 

Fact 2: The Deathly Hallows that he had not thought of in ages had appeared and merged into some strange amalgam.

 

Fact 3: Harry wasn’t nearly creative enough to come up with this kind of shit.

 

Conclusion: This was not him hearing an imaginary voice. Whatever being this was, it was _real_.

 

Harry closed his eyes and pushed his magic out. It was a sensing technique he had learnt back in his auror days when he had been assigned to the Muggleborn cases,a  way of checking to see if any magical cores were around him. Back then, anytime he was out in the Muggle world he would extend it out of him, always on the lookout for any children that might need his assistance. There were more so than he wished.

 

If there was any magical being around him, he would feel them. And feel _them_ he did.

 

It was the strangest magical core he had ever felt and that included Fawkes. Magical cores always said something about their owners, some were warm, some were cold, some felt of herbs, some of antiseptic, some of flowers, the stronger cores left a lingering feeling, almost like a taste. Luna and Fawkes had the most unique ones Harry had ever felt, Luna’s felt like the squeaky clean and crisp feeling of taking a cold shower while Fawkes felt like the dizzying swirl of a polyjuice potion taking effect.

 

This one though...it felt like all of them at once. A barrage of feelings tumbled through him, clean angry heat, sharp and coppery regret, sunny and savoury love, _everything_ , and at the some time…nothing. A hollowness that Harry hadn’t felt even in the darkest of wizards.

 

In in that moment Harry believed. He believed it was Death who was whispering in his mind. Death is fair, death is unfair, it is relief, it is fear, death is everything and it is nothing.

 

And Harry was its Master.

 

**_Such flattery, Master_ **

 

It was pleased. _Death_ was pleased.

 

‘ _Do I have a purpose then? Is there a reason why I’m here?’_

 

**_Death and Life, they need no reason Master. What paths you choose, what fate unfolds, I care not. You live yet because I want you to, I wish to meet you in my realm only when you come to me happy._ **

 

Happy? No task could be harder than that.

 

**_Whatever choice you make, I shall be right with you_ **

 

That...was a comfort.

 

 

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a transition chapter, sorry it's so short. I know it'll disappoint some people but Death has no purpose for sending him back really beyond liking Harry. Really though, the very idea of Death having an agenda is laughable.


	7. Chapter 7

~

 

Halloween was soon to be upon them. The castle was filled with pumpkins and live bats swooping down upon them but for all that Harry was excited he was also a bit disappointed. For the last few years in his original life, he had been celebrating it as Samhain, a rite he shared with Teddy.

 

The pumpkins were carved but not before being completely hollowed out, their innards used in their food and offerings made to the altar they prepared while heather, clove, rosemary and moss were burned on a little bonfire of yew branches with runes carved into them for the safe passage of those that had been lost. The Veil in the Department of Mysteries had been torn down as a post-War change and Harry had been gifted the stones that made up the arch for his efforts. He had turned them into the ring surrounding their bonfire.

 

Their altar and ‘fireplace’ in the Forest of Dean had become a place of True magic, Harry knew that. All sorts of magical creatures congregated around it and it had been that place where he had spotted his first Crumple-Horned Snorkack. It was one of the few times he felt truly at peace, perhaps a holdover from his connection to death, and he missed it.

 

Now especially, surrounded by children he felt particularly out of place.

 

The Old Ways weren’t banned but they were frowned upon and they had been lost. Hogwarts was where children spent most of their developing years and when the school didn’t teach them or celebrate Samhain, they didn’t learn. The arts had been lost centuries ago when the Wizarding World first went into hiding and had since been largely forgotten. 

 

Harry knew he wouldn’t allowed out of sight not with his recent ‘episode’. So it was a very good thing that he knew all the ways in and out of the castle.

 

It was close to midnight when he made his way out of the castle. He thought of the desire to go unseen and felt the silken shroud of his father’s cloak envelop him and on his hand the triangle burnt into his skin disappeared. He walked deep into the forest, every step careful and measured until he reached deep into the woods where the sentient Ford Anglia that he had once flown had built its nest in another life. It was a smallish clearing but it fell in the perfect position as this was the space that two different centaur tribes had declared belonged to no one after a dispute in the 1700’s and was also a bit away from the Acromantula colony.

 

Harry set up his bonfire there, setting down stones that he had asked the Giant Squid to gather form the bottom of the lake, inscribed with runes and then the yew, the moss, heather and the stinging nettle he had found growing in the corner of Greenhouse 4.

 

It was his first Samhain in this world and he had wanted to do it properly. He waited until the witching hour began and then opened the jar of dragon fire he had obtained on another secret trip out of the school and emptied it over the logs.

 

The second it lit up he felt the magic flow over him, a burst of hot and cold that he felt down to his very bones, warming him in the cold of the night whilst still making him feel the wide awake of taking a dip in an icy cold lake.

 

It extended far beyond the limits of the clearing, passing through the very forest which seemed to come alive. The glint of a unicorn horn alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t alone anymore but Harry did not move. He sat down and closed his eyes.

 

He felt a rush go through him that felt like the sacrificial protection his mother had left him. The warmth and joy and his stag Patronus nudging at his hand. Prongs and Lily were there with him in spirit and while he knew he could summon them with his ring, this adoration said it all and he did not feel the need for words to pass between them.

 

When he opened his eyes again the sky to the east was tinged with the barest hints of red. Unicorns were laid out all around him in various states of sleep. A little foal whinnied in its dreams and its mother who was lying down with her head on its middle grunted softly. She cracked open and eye to look at Harry and with what could only be described as an eye roll she snorted. 

 

Harry put his hand over his heart and bowed to the her before beginning his way back to the castle.

 

And it was then that halfway back to the castle he stopped in his tracks.

 

There in front of him in the dirt of the forest laid an unconscious Professor Quirrell.

 

Harry wouldn’t admit it but Quirrell was one of the few incarnations of Voldemort that really had him curious. It hadn’t happened until years after the war when Teddy was about to start his first year in Hogwarts and wanted to hear about Harry’s own.

 

Until he had told his godson the tale, complete with all those questions that children asked when being told something that sounded like an impossible fairytale, that he had wondered just how Voldemort had taken over Quirrell. The exact specifics were lost on him but he did vaguely remember meeting  Quirrell, shaking his hand and nothing happening. So the possession must have happened later but then how exactly had Voldemort spent the rest of the time?

 

The sliver of soul that was Voldemort’s main form was unstable, Harry knew this. It would have possessed the body of smaller animals, more simple forms because there wasn’t that complicated a personality to compete with. And he was supposed to be in the forests of Albania but his possession of Quirrell was one of those things that amazed him.

 

Quirrell was a willing host of the soul, but it was a very small portion of it, only about 1.5 % and yet Voldemort had clearly been the driving force that controlled him to a great extent.

 

On the one hand, Quirrell was admirable for hanging on to his own sense of self for so long given that Voldemort resided in him for a good school year, and at the same time Voldemort and the power he held despite being so very mutilated was quite a feat too.

 

And for all that he knew about Voldemort, Harry still couldn’t quite figure it out. He knew vaguely that at some point in the year he was out in the forest for a punishment or something and he’d come across Quirrell drinking unicorn’s blood to sustain Voldemort’s life.

 

But the soul wouldn’t possibly _die_. Perhaps Quirrell and Voldemort sharing the same body might have caused deterioration but Voldemort had proven over and over again that he could possess others too. The homunculus that he lived in for most of Harry’s fourth year proved it.

 

So...why did he need the unicorn blood?

 

But perhaps more importantly, _what would Harry with the man now?_

 

Harry had fought his wars, he had defeated all those he needed to. He had died when he had needed to.

 

But _now_...now he didn’t really care much, not enough to fight. And he knew well enough that this was not the path that would bring him happiness, being a pawn, a soldier, a leader in a war. But he could say all that but it didn’t really mean anything, not when Voldemort would come after him anyway because of a half heard self fulfilling prophecy.

 

Harry was a parent in his other life and he had been told he was a good parent. He knew that there was only so much you could help your child, they would learn, they would make their own way into the world and the best thing you could was to support them but also let them go. And in many ways, wasn’t the Wizarding world like a child? There was only so much he could do. The rest they would have to learn themselves. He couldn’t just fight their wars for them, couldn’t just take Voldemort out like he did in his last life. When he had done that, he had seen that they hadn’t learnt. The Purebloods held a tight grasp over their politics that took a lot of work to loosen. And in the end it didn’t do any good at all.

 

Harry had to let them go. And to do that he needed to take Voldemort’s attention off him.

 

Quirrell was still knocked out in front of him and Harry bent at the knees to look at the man. He seemed so ordinary, especially now. With the turban knocked off his head he looked young. Harry moved to see the other side and found Voldemort there as well. He had that strange look that snakes often had when sleeping, as if they were smiling. Strange how the pretty boy that was Tom Riddle had turned into this.

 

When Harry pushed out his magic to take a look at their core he was fascinated to find them separate. Quirrell’s core felt like the trembles that Teddy used to get just before exams, shivery and shaky as if constantly unsure. Voldemort’s on the other hand felt like a snake, a big one. There was a dry feeling to it like the scales but at the same time that tension of muscle that came with them. Even more fascinatingly, it was unmarked by the curse that came from killing a unicorn. Apparently it wasn’t quite that time yet.

 

What would his world be like, he wondered, if Voldemort’s soul was whole and untouched by the curse? If it wasn’t just the sadistic killing that Voldemort so adored but also the cunning and manipulation that the young Tom Riddle had employed. The world might have fallen at his feet just because he asked. A pretty face combined with a medium amount of power went a considerable way when compared to a lot of power but no tact. The way Ginny had moved forward in the ranks of whatever she put her hand to, while Hermione had started off on a high before falling ever steadily down proved it.

 

Harry stared at the prone body in front of him. He was curious and that didn’t really happen often. This was a different world, a different Harry. It deserved a different fate. Ad perhaps Harry could facilitate that.

 

What was it that the poem said? Oh yes,

 

 _For want of a nail the shoe was lost,_  
for want of a shoe the horse was lost,  
for want of a horse the knight was lost,  
for want of a knight the battle was lost,  
for want of a battle the kingdom was lost.  
So a kingdom was lost—all for want of a nail

 

So...what would happen if Harry was to give the nail?

 

* * *

 

Voldemort woke with a start. The wave of magic that had crashed down upon them was potent, so very much so that it was all the magic needed to sustain him. He wondered who it was that had channelled so much power in the Samhain ritual.

 

And it was very powerful. In dreams he had been visited by a wan, thin woman with pity and regret and something else in her eyes, something he didn’t quite recognise. He was a child in those dreams and she had stroked the dark hair on his head.

 

 _‘Just like your father’_ she whispered and put a soft kiss upon his head as the dream ended and his sleep was lost but he clung to that comfort with a ferocity only rivalled by the self-hatred coursing through him at the display of weakness.

 

“M-my Lord,” Quirrell’s reedy voice interrupted his musings. “S-someone found us here, they left a note.”

 

_“I am that that lives on_

_I_ _n the empty pages of a book_

 

_I am that that lives on_

_In that unquenched thirst of an empty grail_

 

_I am that that lives on_

_In the remembrances held in a crest upon a carcanet_

 

 _I_ _am that that lives on_

_In the crack of the black stone upon a wizened hand_

 

_I am that that lives on_

_In the wisdom unbestowed by a halo unworn_

 

_I am that that lives on_

_In the mind of a willing and unwilling slave_

 

_I am that that lives on_

_In the question asked and the answer undead_

 

_What am I?”_

 

A unholy screech of a sound rent the calm of the forest and sent birds flying through the air in unrest. As Quirrell wondered what had upset his master so, Voldemort fumed. He knew the answer well.

 

A Riddle.

 

 

~ 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to add that the 'For want of a nail' poem isn't mine. It has its own wikipedia page and I used the Knight variation from DC comics 


	8. Chapter 8

~

 

The castle was abuzz and more than one professor was missing from breakfast. The students talked excitedly, comparing their dreams, in utter wonder. The pumpkins of Halloween still hung but it was not Halloween but  _ Samhain _ that Hogwarts had experienced.

 

Because all those still abed when the wave of ritual magic washed over them had been visited by dreams of their ancestors, visiting from beyond the grave to scold, to cajole, to adore and more. Cedric himself had been visited by his great grandfather’s spirit who told him tales of his youth that left Cedric scandalised and more than a little amused. If it was an apparition of his mind’s making he wondered at his subconscious and how perverted it was. He had written of it in a letter to his father, wanting confirmation even though he knew it was true, the way he had knew that twelve and a quarter inch ash wand with the unicorn hair was  _ his _ , the way he knew the sun would rise and then set. 

 

The rest hadn't been quite as lucky. They were a generation that had been born on the tail end of a war, there were many who had been felled by their fellow wizards. Susan Bones had been in tears all day long as her parents came to her to tell her how proud they were of her. More than one of those orphaned from the Wizarding war had been moved and now wandered the hallways of Hogwarts alternating between smiles and tears.

 

But not Harry Potter. 

 

Every single passing day since his attempt to drown himself, the Boy-Who-Lived had all but blossomed, and now when Cedric thought he would be wracked with sorrow and grief following dreams of the parents he had never gotten to know, he all but skipped.

 

As lunch came, the professors, many of whom had cancelled classes, finally descended from their quarters and the school saw a wan Headmaster that was all but trembling, a McGonagall whose sternness remained, albeit with a touch of wobbly happiness to it and even Flitwick was barely refraining from beaming.

 

And then Severus Snape walked in with his usually greasy hair clean and pulled back with a leather thong, his sallow skin almost pink and a sense of peace to his countenance that no one in Hogwarts had ever seen in him. 

 

_ Many years ago, a girl with flame coloured hair had seen it but it was a secret thing and fleeting. It was only right then that she should be the one to give it back to him through his dreams _

 

Quirrell, however, remained missing.

 

* * *

 

The man, no, the  _ soul  _ known as Voldemort was lost in contemplation and if he dared admit it to himself, more than a little fear.

 

Someone knew his true name. Someone knew of the soul containers he had strewn over the continent. And everything pointed to this person being the incredibly powerful one who had conducted the Samhain rite with such  _ belief  _ that all of Hogwarts had been affected by it.

 

The first thing he had done was to rush to the Hall of Lost Things to see if his diadem horcrux was still there and it was. If the one failsafe he had in Hogwarts, which was obviously easy for the person to get to was still there, unharmed and judging by the cobwebs, not so much as touched then he would think that the rest were fairly safe as well. So, it hadn't been a threat, no, it was simply a taunt.

 

He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

 

All the plans he had made were turning to nothing. Bringing the troll in was ideal to distract the rest but now…

 

Now, he wasn’t so sure. There would be an indelible mark left by the True Magic that had touched them all. The castle would be celebrating Samhain, the day of Harvest and the beginning of winter, the day when the the boundaries between the worlds were easily traversed, not Halloween, the day the war ended when a little boy hadn’t died like he should have. His distraction would not distract them nearly as well and already he had seen how Severus suspected Quirrell.

 

Even the troll hadn’t been left untouched by the magic, where it had had to be subdued in his room with multiple spells before, its agitation growing with every moment of captivity, now it only paced, listless. 

 

No, the feast would continue without any disturbances. But he still needed to make other plans. Quirrell’s body was ill suited to holding his soul in it. His core was closer to Grey in nature and affiliation and too small in turn. Voldemort’s own was heavily Dark and far too powerful, already the strain was showing. Unicorn blood would have made it much easier, the curse of drinking from such a pure creature would help shade Quirrell’s core more to the Dark and the boost of power would help keep him intact. 

 

Now, the unicorns would too fleet on their feet to hunt down. He would simply have Quirrell find him a snake and possess it instead. Perhaps even find a way to use the diadem horcrux to help him regain himself, after all, he did have them for a reason. 

 

For now he would simply attend the feast as expected. 

 

* * *

 

Voldemort hadn’t expected to enjoy the effects of the Samhain rite. After all, it was that which had rendered so many of his plans useless.

 

_ And it was that which had made him wonder about the boy who was Tom Marvolo Riddle in all these years, wondered if perhaps such a dream in decades past might have set him upon a different path. _

_ But he was the Dark Lord Voldemort now.  _

_ And for all his defeats, he liked being the Dark Lord Voldemort _

_ But still _

_ He wondered… _

 

And here he was, amused. Part of him, a rather large part of him if he cared to admit it, was utterly ecstatic at having his plans ruined if only for the sight in front of him.

 

He had seen Albus Dumbledore sad, he had seen him angry. He had seen him suspicious and even grieving but never had he seen him so unnerved and so blatantly guilty.

 

Whatever ghosts had visited him in his dreams, they must not much in way of kind words for him. He was twitchy, even the usually charmed decorations on his robes looking flat and dull. He had half moons and stars in yellow on his purple robes but they looked mottled and greying. The pallor Dumbledore sported made him want to grin, something he hadn’t done in years and the heavy breathing, the sunken lines on the man’s face only made it better.

 

The fact that the other teachers were on such a high that they didn’t notice only made it that much sweeter.

 

Yes, Voldemort was amused.

 

The only damper was that Dumbledore’s little hero in training wasn’t the same. Harry Potter was all but beaming, for the first time since school had begun the boy was acting his age. He wasn’t quite what Voldemort was expecting. Even putting the little drowning attempt aside, he was strange. Voldemort had yet to see a child who was so nonchalant before. He wasn’t aloof, not exactly but he was quite content in his own company. He answered questions when asked but didn’t raise his hand to answer at all. In the Gryffindor-Slytherin class that he lectured Hermione Granger’s enthusiasm and consequent long answers kept the rest from trying to earn points by volunteering to answer, the Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw batch that Harry Potter was a part of had many who made these attempts. 

 

Potter didn’t join in with cheering for his House, he didn’t get morose when he saw the hourglasses with Hufflepuff so far behind. He didn’t whisper and move away from the Slytherins when they passed by them in corridors, nor did he puff up at the encouragement and adorations thrown at him by the Gryffindor crowd.

 

He just didn’t seem to care at all.

 

It threw him off. There were no self-righteous fights with the ‘evil Slytherins’, no taking advantage of his status as the Boy-Who-Lived, no favouritism from Dumbledore.

 

...No favouritism from Dumbledore. That  _ was  _ odd.

 

He hadn’t noticed it before because Dumbledore still paid the boy far too much attention. But this was not the attention of that grandfatherly kind wizard ever so famous for defeating Grindewald. No, this was the watching, cautious attention of a certain Transfiguration professor that had blanched upon hearing that the muggleborn orphan he was sent to introduce to magic could speak to serpents and set fire to a wardrobe.

 

This made Harry Potter far more interesting than any prophecy ever did.

 

~


	9. Chapter 9

 

The castle was alive and all but dancing with joy. Dumbledore felt it in the waves of magic crashing down upon him and everyone else alike, in the strength of the wards come alive, could see it in the almost dizzying patterns the staircases moved in and could hear it in the chatter of the portraits.

 

And he hated every second of it.

 

Change was...difficult for him. Minerva would see his qualms about change on his face, and tease him for being an old man but his dislike for change was older than that, it’s roots went deeper than she would ever know. There was a time when he had wanted to change the world, wanted to do it with Gellert at his side. He had wanted to set the world aflame so that it would rise from the ashes as the vision he wanted it to be.

 

He had learnt how wrong he was. He had learnt how wrong he was to want such a thing. Now, the person that he was, he couldn’t even contemplate why he had ever wanted change. He had been content, after all. Arrogant and dismissive of his responsibilities, but content nonetheless.

 

He feared that boy he had been more than anything else. He feared that power hungry, lustful for change boy more than he had ever feared Tom. 

 

And the dreams this Samhain had given him, Ariana and his parents sighing in disappointment, condemning him with silence and forgiveness even as Albus begged for absolution, kept on asking Ariana if it truly was his curse that had killed her, it only reminded him of that boy he had been, once more.

 

It  _ terrified  _ him.

 

And as he saw a young boy enter the Great Hall with his father’s hair, and his mother’s eyes, and his Peverell blood, he was reminded of the other things that terrified him.

 

**Death**

 

He knew, he just  _ knew  _ that Harry had something to do with the disappearance of the Elder Wand and the Invisibility cloak. The boy walked to his own Death into the Great Lake and Deathly hallows disappearing but a few hours later, it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. 

 

The boy knew. He probably had the Stone with him as well, Albus thought, bitter. Samhain had given him no absolution, only more doubts. The Stone was the answer to those doubts, the Stone would let him ask Ariana about the truth and she would  _ have  _ to answer him, the Stone would make it so.

 

Not for the first time in his life Albus coveted the Hallows. 

 

And as the greed for them grew, he slowly shattered.

 

That boy he had once been was resurfacing again.

 

Yes, Albus was terrified.

 

* * *

 

The note still haunted him, even weeks after he’d received it. Someone knew of his horcruxes and instead of destroying them, the ‘abomination’ that they were, they decided only to play games with him. Tease him.

 

He hadn’t thought about his horcruxes in a while. It wasn’t that he didn’t care only that he was so certain they wouldn’t be found, so confident no one would ever realize how far he’d gone in his quest for immortality that he’d put them out of mind.

 

Now, they never left his mind. He couldn’t break into Gringotts again, not so so soon after he’d already done so. Their hackles would be up and it was far too much of a risk. The Goblins hated horcruxes, hated soul magic with a vehemence, he was afraid they might break their own policies to destroy it once they found out they had one in their possessions. No, he couldn’t raise their suspicions like that.

 

Instead he took the more subtle route. On weekends when staff meetings and other such encumbrances were few he made the trip to see if his other horcruxes were safe. The first place he went to was the shack in Little Hangleton. The ring was still there, his horcrux still intact but for some reason the stone was missing.

 

The enchantments and protections upon the shack were perfectly fine, untouched and yet…

 

The stone was missing and he couldn’t figure out how or why.

 

The next few weekends were spent apparating to the shack at every free moment, desperate to figure out what had happened or it, how the person had gotten away with it. He found no answers and for all his efforts, all the spells cast to see if a single thread in the web of enchantments he had woven around them had been triggered, only got a bill of ill health from Madame Pomfrey who insisted he take it slow as the magical exhaustion got worse and worse.

 

His patience frayed. Quirrell was loyal, unquestioning but his magics were weak and Grey and it muddled their coexistence, the fight between the two magics exhausting in a way all the exertion from casting spells wasn’t.

 

He needed to find a way to get a body of his own but couldn't do it without his horcruxes. The soul in his ring could be assimilated, even the shard in the diadem could restore him his strength but it would take time and potions, the likes of which Quirrell couldn’t perform, not without rousing suspicion as they sat under the watchful eye of Dumbledore. The stone was out of question now that he knew someone who knew his secrets had access to the castle. What if the Stone had been altered somehow to weaken him, to kill him, what if the trap Dumbledore had laid for him had been tampered with by someone else, an unknown player whose moves he could not predict? No, the stone no longer held his interest.

 

The weeks passed, autumn beginning to give way to winter. The Christmas holidays soon started and it was the lack of the essays that usually crossed his desk so very often that reminded him of another horcrux, one that wouldn’t require anything but a piece of soul to nourish it, bring it back to ‘life’. 

 

And so Voldemort wrote a note to Lucius Malfoy imbuing it with his magic and a command, knowing fully well that the boy, his dear friend Abraxas’ son would know exactly who sent him the letter. He wrote to the boy and commanded that the artifact that the Dark Lord had entrusted to him be returned to their rightful owner, that it be brought to Hogwarts under specific instructions. 

 

A week later after a fretful visit by Lucius Malfoy, Chairman of the Hogwarts Board of Governors,  he held the diary, his birth name embossed in glossy gold upon its cover and poured his ‘soul’ out in ink and words.

 

* * *

 

Quirrell did not know why his master wanted to write in the blank book sent to him by Lucius but he did. And when the tip of the quill touched the page he felt that buzz, that addictive heady feeling of his Lord’s magic, only emanating from the little diary and so much stronger.

 

He wrote, introduced himself, talked of looking for his lord in the wilderness, talked of finding him and the consequent adventure that was trying to help him as best he could. Spoke of Gringotts and breaking into the bank, of trolls, of unicorns, of Samhain. He tried to put into words the devotion that he felt for his Lord.

 

It was taking something from him, each word eh wrote but it wasn’t quite the drain that came from his Lord took over and their magics battled it out. Not quite the drain of exhausting himself casting spells upon spells under his Lord’s guidance. 

 

No, this was something gentler. Sitting in the alcove near the library after the exams were done and the feeling of his eyes getting heavier as the sun crossed over the horizon. Like the ebbing away of his fears as he spoke of them to his mother as they sat around the fireplace. A soft and steady calm taking over him, like the fight was over, the struggle had been resolved and now there was finally time to rest. As he gave in to the embrace of slumber, his hand still poised over the diary’s pages, ink pooling where his unmoving hand stayed, pressing the quill’s nib against the surface, the pages of the book flickered. His hand moved the few scant centimeters to the surface of the desk as the diary vanished from existence as if it had never been there at all, and a tall man sat down on the chair across from him. His jet black hair curled softly over his forehead and his eyes kept flashing, alternating between grey and red before settling upon a mottled grey, flecked through with a red so deep it looked brown. 

 

With a flick of his hand, the man levitated the sleeping Quirrell to his bed, covering him up with his bed covers. Quirrell sighed, contentedly and burrowed further into his sheets and the man dimmed the lights making his way to the bathroom ensuite. 

 

He stared at his reflection in the mirror before chuckling softly.

 

“The Dark Lord is dead, long live Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't particularly like Dumbledore if it isn't obvious from my writing (sarcasm) but I also didn't want to make him a standard power hungry villain type of character. I very much adored him for a very long time which is probably why I dislike him so much, a shattered illusions sort of thing. I can recognise that my hatred of him, while not as rabid as some others I know, is still not very rational. Yes, he made many, many shit decisions and yes, his shit decisions had a lot worse impact because he was an influential figure with a a substantial amount of power but if I afford so much sympathy for Tom Riddle for how his childhood impacted him I should be able to throw at least a little bit of it Dumbledore's way for his childhood and adolescence and its impact on him
> 
> So I'm trying (only just trying, not actually succeeding) to write him as a not so nice person, but still a person of his own being, without my own prejudices colouring my portrayal of him. This fic is honestly more about me resolving my complicated feelings about the series than it is about Tom or Harry.
> 
> Also, with regards to the diary thing that just happened, from the way Diary Tom spoke in CoS, it seemed like he needed to completely gorge himself on a soul to gain a corporeal body and while Quirrell's Voldemort is a part of a soul, I'd say it still counts as an individual enough entity that it satisfies the diary's conditions. I've often wondered if maybe Harry writing in the diary would allow for the Scar Voldie to merge with the diary and give Diary Tom enough of a boost that he can become corporeal. There is a part of my brain screaming 'No, Ginny was losing her corporeal body as well, that doesn't make sense' but the other part is saying 'It's magic, of course it doesn't make sense'.


	10. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very basic summary of what happened after Voldemort died as per Deathly Hallows up to Ginny killing Harry as per my head canon. I don't know, people seemed to think I Ginny bashed and I never thought of it that way because the usual Ginny bashing fics I read have betrothal contracts or loyalty potions etc and that was never my headcanon.

**Before he Began Again**

 

The first ten years after the war had been bliss.

He hadn’t thought at the time though. At the time when they were rebuilding their world, when Hogwarts was being repaired, when wards were being put up, when they were so busy that the few moments they got together were filled with tired sleepy half talks, it hadn’t seemed fun. Too many burials and funerals and court cases, but also, many weddings, many children’s naming ceremonies. Harry spent a few years going from Hogwarts to the Ministry to Andromeda’s place. He changed so many diapers, he thought he’d be glad when Teddy was finally potty trained. Then Ginny was pregnant and they had James and then Albus and Lily in quick succession and he was back to changing diapers again. 

At the time it had been a hectic decade, still running around trying to catch the last few Death eaters, still fighting for justice in the post-war world. But it was a good ache, the ache of things healing.

But eventually things changed. They got stable and Harry and Ginny got to spend more time together without their children fussing around all the time. And it was awkward and trying. IT was only when they had the time to be alone together without buffers such as Hermione, and Ron, and sex, that they realized they didn’t actually like each other that much. They fought, but those were the good times. Most of the times they just sat in silence. Ginny threw herself into Quidditch and Harry threw himself into work. They grew distant and separate.

And the farther away Harry got, the happier he was. He rose through the ranks at work for his stellar performance in the field and off it. His amiability won him a fair few friends. He was buoyant and tried to change things for the better of the young children that had become his focus. It became his life.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love his children, but there was very little for him to do once they went off to school. James came back home a lot, mostly because it let him meet Teddy even after he’d graduated Hogwarts but Albus and Lily were solidly in love with Hogwarts and he couldn’t begrudge them that. They were growing up after all, he couldn’t stop them from doing that.

Teddy stayed for some reason. Every Halloween, every Yule, every other day at the ministry, he would come meet Harry. As the muggle and wizarding ministries began a long cold war of sorts, Teddy was his one solace. Lines were drawn in the ground, stark and wide. The children fell in between the cracks formed by those lines and Harry fought for them anew.

As the chasm between the worlds grew larger, people grew more unsettled. Until the ban on all things muggle had been put into action they hadn’t realised how dependent they were on these little day to day items. The Wizarding Wireless was the first to go, but by no means the last. 

When  Gringotts offered Lily a job in America, she took it. Even their laws on interaction with non-maj folk weren’t as harsh as the ones in Britain. James and Fred went to France where Gabrielle took them under her wing. Albus had left ages before they had, absconding to Asia with Scorpius, whose family was very strongly against his relationship with the ‘Potter boy’.

They sent him letters, many of them. Mostly asking him to move to where they were, that he’d worked hard enough, he’d fought for the Muggle and Wizards enough. To take a break, take a rest.

But Harry couldn’t leave. This was his home and besides, Teddy was still there. 

So he stayed. 

And as Ginny stayed as well, knowing well that the backlash she would face for leaving the Boy-Who-Lived to fight the good fight alone, she grew angry and bitter. There were days when she didn’t see her husband and those days turned to weeks quickly enough. One time he came home, drunk off his tits, Dean supporting his weight. He and Ginny got to talking, got to reminiscing. 

And her regret, her bitterness grew, shifting and turning to hatred soon enough. Harry didn’t know. How could he, he would need to be at home once in a while for that to happen.

Being with Dean was so easy in comparison. They laughed, they talked, they fucked. He showed her his secret stash of muggle contraband, with books, cans of food, cameras and more. And it was a little muggle book that first planted the seed of murder in her mind. In the book, a young girl killed her much older and married lover for refusing to leave his wife for her. She poisoned his drink and watched him die and Ginny thought, in the deepest, darkest parts of her mind that no one had ever known of except for Tom, that she’d like to do that.

But for that to happen Harry would have to be home. What if, in the meantime she accidentally got Dean with it? No, that wouldn’t do. Besides, it was a silly idea and she had learnt a long time ago that books weren’t quite the ally she thought they were. As if she could kill Harry! He was the father of her children after all.

And then Harry came home. Came home as she and Dean were still busy fucking. He didn’t yell, didn’t shout, nothing. Only looked at her with poorly disguised disgust. 

She had seen that look directed at her many a time. The Malfoys in particular had shot it her way more than once.

Harry walked off and her anger only grew. That he didn’t even say anything, it galled her.

Dean had a very different reaction. He told her that their trysts had to end. That he had messed up trying to rekindle their old flame. 

That he wouldn’t do this to Harry, not anymore.

Harry, Harry, Harry, that was all she ever heard. How could Dean do this to  _ her _ ?!

In a fit of rage she poisoned Harry’s drink. Watched him die and spat out every single unkind thought she had ever had about him. Even if they weren’t true, even if they existed only as a brief passing thought that she had only ever hated herself for. She wanted him to look at her, and hate her.  Hate her as much as she hated him.

But he didn’t. There was only pity in his eyes as they turned glassy. And even then, even dying he just had to have the last word, didn’t he? Bastard.

 

_ ‘You didn’t even have enough soul for Tom to take’ _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Ginny read a lot of Agatha Christie books, (referring to a particular one, tell me if you guessed which one) and decided to fuck it and just kill him. 
> 
> I don't know, I see a lot of people my age having affairs while married or with married folk and Harry's entire generation is only 13-14 years older than me per canon. Lots of divorces after marrying young too, to me marital discord turned deadly seems rational, which is really sad.


	11. Chapter 11

~

 

Harry doesn’t like his fellow housemates much.

 

Alright, that’s a lie. It’s not that he doesn’t like them, but he likes them in a vague way, not quite able to forget what the people they grew into the first time around. He feels like that about most of the students and teachers in Hogwarts. There was so much history there, history that Harry couldn’t forget, and wouldn’t forgive.

 

Which was rather unfair of him. They were only children after all, mouldable and pliant and they had become the people that they were under the pressures of the school. He shouldn’t dislike them.

 

But he still did and it would probably continue until they grew up and became those people that he liked, the ones he’d seen at work everyday. 

 

It probably didn’t help that Zacharias Smith was the one to try the most to be his friend and did so in ridiculously embarrassing ways that were rather reminiscent of Malfoy. It also didn’t help that he was a jaded, old man inside the young body, one whose children had grown up a long time ago. He didn’t have the patience to play house with them not when it wasn’t just playing for them. Pretending to sip tea from his granddaughter’s plastic tea set when visiting them for Christmas in America was one thing, pretending to be an actual child was quite beyond him.

 

Still, it seemed his antisocial behaviour hadn’t gone unnoticed.

 

They had been treating him gingerly since the Great Lake incident. Letting him do things at his own pace but when the Christmas holidays grew close and he signed up to leave for the holidays over the break, he was called to Professor Sprout’s office where she asked him if he was ‘having trouble with some of the boys’.

 

“I don’t suffer fools gladly.” He said, and it was the truth. There was once a time when Harry had been kinder, when he had been forgiving. When it took one hangdog expression and a sheepish ‘Sorry’ for him to forgive.

 

Time had changed that.

 

“Mr Potter, it is absolutely unkind of you to say that about your fellow students.” Professor Sprout said, jolting Harry out of his meandering thoughts.

 

“Unkind maybe, but true. My ‘fellow students’ gawk at me, try to make friends with me because at some point my parents died while I did not and somehow that’s supposed to induce some form of kindness from me? I may be the Boy-Who-Lived, but I’m no saint.”

 

“If they make you feel uncomfortable why didn’t you say anything to me or any of the other teachers?”

 

“They don’t make me  _ uncomfortable _ . I just don’t care about them and have no intention of seeking their company out.” Professor Sprout scowled further and opened her mouth to speak when Harry interrupted her, “I hope you haven’t called me in just to give me a lecture on this? I haven’t seen this level of concern for any other students who are actually being bullied so I can only assume it is because of my ‘celebrity status’ as Professor Snape calls it.”

 

Sprout blushed violently, twisting her mouth but ultimately calming herself down to a mere frown.

 

“You haven’t signed up to stay over for the winter holidays and we were simply wondering where you would be staying for the duration of the same.”

 

“You don’t think it’s with my muggle relatives?”

 

“Given some of the statements you’ve made regarding them, it didn’t seem likely.”

 

That was interesting. The bits he’d thrown out about the Dursleys to throw them off track for the real reason he’d gone into the lake had somehow been remembered by Sprout. Strange, given that Ron having to rescue him from his own house in Second year hadn’t had anyone so much as batting an eyelash. Either Sprout was a lot more involved as a head of house than McGonagall or something was fishy here.

 

“While I appreciate your concern, I won’t be informing you as to my whereabouts these holidays.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“There are many reasons. Privacy for one, not wanting public attention for another, but mostly it’s because I don’t trust you.”

 

“Mr Potter, I-”

 

“That’s not going to change over the course of the next week.” He said firmly and stood up, “If that’s all, Professor Sprout?”

 

“No, that is not all, sit down Mr Potter.” Sprout said sternly and Harry was so shocked at the steely spine she was showing that he did just that. “Now, you’ve said that your fellow classmates annoy you, yes? Are any of the upperclassmen acceptable then?”

 

“Diggory’s alright, I suppose.” Harry said and Professor Sprout nodded. 

 

“I’ll be honest Mr Potter, we’re not keen on letting you go out of sight. Whether you like it or not, you’re considered an at risk individual given the Great Lake incident. One of the options we seriously considered was sending one of the professors with you wherever you might go. I argued against that knowing you’re a private individual and hoping that you could be a responsible one as well. Your responses today do not prove that. As such, I’ll require you to send a letter every third day to Mr Diggory confirming your health, along with the front page of the Daily Prophet of the day.” Harry opened his mouth to argue but was cut off by her very quickly, “That is not negotiable. If you fail to comply, I will be forced to go down to the Ministry and ask them to track you down. We have given you  a lot of leeway and are continuing to do so but there is a limit.”

 

For a moment, Harry wondered what it would have been like to be a Hufflepuff his first time around. Would Professor Sprout perhaps have listened when he said that someone was trying to steal the Philosopher’s stone? Would Professor Sprout perhaps give the Hufflepuffs a stern talking to so that they wouldn’t hail Harry as the Slytherin heir? Would she have gotten the ‘Potter Stinks’ badges to be confiscated if he was a Hufflepuff?

 

Who knew. Maybe it would have been better. But maybe it would have been worse. 

 

There was nothing to do but agree to Professor Sprout’s terms and leave. After all, he still had plans to go through.

 

* * *

Harry sat at the desk in the Leaky Cauldron suite he’d rented and looked over the documents in front of him. One, a letter to Cedric telling him he was alive and well with the Daily prophet stacked under it, ready to be folded up and sent. Cedric hadn’t fussed much, hadn’t asked a million questions the way Harry had expected him to. Then again, he was probably busy with Christmas preparations. Harry had his own little Yule rites to perform but that would be a while later. 

 

For now he simply looked over the other parchment going over every word with a fine toothed comb. It was a legal document after all, one that he had had to prepare himself. He had to pay a pretty sickle at Gringotts for the notarisation and the seal but he’d managed well enough. It helped that this time around they weren’t pissed off at him for breaking into the bank.His past experience had come in handy and he had pored over a lot of legal books to phrase this document the way he wanted it to be. 

 

After all, it was as close to emancipating himself as he got. Still a minor but with substantially more power and with his guardianship officially transferred to Sirius Black. 

 

Harry had plans to save Sirius but they would take time. Not much time, only until the summer hols. But for this he needed to go to the Dursleys and that was tedious enough as it was. He had called Petunia from a phone booth near the Leaky Cauldron and she’d agreed with much reluctance to meet him in a quiet coffee shop in London while there to do some Christmas shopping. He attached the letter to Hedwig’s leg, sending her off to Cedric and took the other in hand as he left to go to Muggle London.

 

Having a set time when she would meet him was good. It gave him time to set up some privacy wards and gave him some extra time to prepare to see Petunia. He would need that.

 

The last time he’d seen her was at her grandson, his nephew’s birthday. She had had to sneak out to be there because Vernon had cut all ties with Dudley when he failed to stamp the freakishness out of his son. She’d died soon after, Vernon accidentally driving into a pole with her in the car with him. There had been questions about just ‘accidental’ it was. The blood reports said that Vernon hadn’t been drinking, the road was near empty and dry, and Vernon and Petunia had been fighting more and more.

 

She came into the cafe, saw him sitting in his booth and sniffed. Harry could only look at her, dazed. Had she always looked so young? He could barely remember a time when she didn’t have grey peppered through the dark hair.

 

“Well, what do you want?” She asked, brusque, and he lost those nostalgic rose tinted glasses. This wasn’t  _ his  _ Aunt Petunia, not really. Not the one who had learnt and grown out of her hatred of magic.

 

“I want you to sign these documents, transferring all rights of guardianship to Sirius Black.”

 

“And have that headmaster of yours after my skin? I don’t think so.”

 

“Did Dumbledore tell you that the protection my being at your home provides is only until I turn seventeen? Or that I’m a person of more than a little bit of interest in my world and as such will always have people trying to kill me and anyone associated with me?”

 

She blanched but maintained her stance, scowling. “And have your lot harass me for throwing you out?” She sneered.

 

Harry sighed. He didn’t want to threaten her but if that was what it took…

 

“Do you know what wandless magic is?” She shook her head in the negative, “It’s when people perform magic without a wand or any other instrument, not like the accidental stuff children do, it’s deliberate, see? It’s untraceable and the Ministry can’t keep track of it the way they can track wand usage.” Little by little he heated up the cup she had wrapped her hands around until she let it go, flinching at the heat. “Stuff like that. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think spending months with a hostile child at your house capable of wandless magic...that doesn’t sound like fun, don’t you think?”

 

She stared at him with wide, hateful eyes. “You monster!”

 

Harry shrugged, “I’m going to be rid of you one way or the other, it’s up to you which way it will be.”

 

She bared her teeth at him but it ended soon enough, “Give me a pen.”

 

He handed her a Blood Quill, “It’ll sign in your blood, might hurt a bit but makes it legal and binding in my world.” He explained and with a flourish she signed her name, only a sudden flinch telling of the pain of the Blood Quill working. Harry tucked it away. It would only be fully binding once he signed it as well and he still had a few things to take care of before that. Namely destroying the instruments Dumbledore had monitoring the wards and getting rid of Figg. Wouldn’t be difficult, he could get it done in a matter of minutes but as an old man redoing his first year of schooling, he was bored and having a few interesting ‘challenges’ to do, took his mind off his boredom. There were only so many books from the restricted section he could read before he started getting cross-eyed. 

 

Petunia moved to go and Harry stopped her with a stern “Wait, we’re not done yet.”

 

They still had things to discuss.

 

“What is it now?”

 

“You’ve been told you’re a muggle, that my mother was a muggleborn. That’s incorrect.”

 

“What?”

 

“Your grandmother, Aster, she was a squib. You, your father, Dudley, you’re not muggles, you’re squibs. People of magical descent unable to do magic.” Petunia turned bone white and began shaking.

 

“Why are you telling me this?” She said softly, more than a little pain lacing her words. It seemed she hadn’t gotten over being unable to do magic yet.

 

“Because as Marge loves to say, it all comes down to breeding. Blood outs itself. Somewhere down your family line, maybe even just Dudley’s children, they might have magic. When and if that happens, should your pig of a husband so much as raise a hand to that child, I will kill him.” The air around them turned cold. It wasn’t deliberate, wasn’t his own doing. The sheer mention of death had thinned the veil between worlds, where the symbol of the hallows had rested upon his palm, it grew warm. The gravelly voice that Death seemed to have chuckled in Harry’s mind.

 

Harry wondered if he had overstepped his bounds. That perhaps he had intruded on Death’s domain.

 

But then, Death had said to do what he wanted to be happy. And for all the cynicism Harry had acquired, his job had always made him happy. That he got to keep children from facing the same fate as himself, it was the best feeling in the world.

 

So, with another glare shot at her, Harry let Petunia go, hoping she would heed his warning. He was no longer in the business of giving folk second chances and he had other things to do.

 

After all, Yule was approaching fast.

 

* * *

 

Cedric didn’t know what it was about this year, but the Old Magickes had been overwhelming. His family didn’t celebrate many of the old ways, Yule was the only time they really made a bit of an effort. Mistletoe, presents, a sickle in the pudding, small things like that, but they gave them a comfort.

 

This Yule though, he thought of Samhain at Hogwarts, and wondered.

It wouldn’t be that difficult to celebrate Yule in the old way, to go to where the ley lines crossed with a simple side-along apparation. They had an Ash tree growing on their lands, it would be easy enough to take a branch from it and celebrate Yule as their ancestors once did.

 

The only problem was convincing his parents to do the same. They were pureblood and  _ knew  _ the old ways but the traditions had so long been associated with dark wizards that it would be an uphill battle. Cedric needed to decide if he was willing to take up that fight.

 

Another time and perhaps he wouldn’t have. Perhaps he would have dismissed it as unworthy of the effort.

 

But the memories of Samhain were strong and Cedric had so rarely asked for anything that his parents were likely to give this one thing to him.

 

It helped that the Weasley twins had decided to get in on the act as well. Between the twins and him, the adults barely got a word in edgewise or say anything at all let alone deny them their little trip.

 

In the end it was decided that the three would be given a portkey to take to the confluence point. There was a bit of flurry in the Ministry and both the Weasley and Diggory patriarchs had been called to work, while Cedric’s mother had to go to the Lovegood’s house, Xenophilius calling for her help with some ‘girl thing’. Molly Weasley couldn’t go either, Ron, Ginny and Percy requiring her supervision and she still wasn’t convinced but seeing as Cedric was such a ‘lovely boy’ and a ‘good influence’, she let the twins go with him even without parental supervision, as long as they allowed a tracking charm to be placed on them, making sure to tell them to learn something from Cedric. They gave the boys an old tent and a hamper full of food and off the three went.

 

So there they were, three boys with a dirty sock of a portkey in their hand, in the middle of a forest on top of a mountain where the circle of stone stood. To the muggles it looked like the remains of an old wall, but the magical folk could see the spiraling pattern in which the stones were placed, toadstools growing between then.

 

In the middle they would place the branch from the Ash tree and burn it when the moon was highest in the sky but there was still time to go, so Cedric and the twin set about decorating the tree around them with oranges and apples and blessed thistle. They couldn’t use their wands and put up the decorations with spells unfortunately and so it took them a while, climbing up and down the trees, making a game out of it. 

 

It was Yule, the time when the Sun was reborn, when the days grew longer, when the cold of winter began to give way to life. How could they not celebrate such a time?

 

“Having fun?”, came the soft voice of a boy Cedric definitely wasn’t expecting. Harry Potter stood, arms crossed leaning against a tree, watching them carefully.

 

When Professor Sprout told him Harry Potter was to write him every other day to prove he was alright, Cedric had thought it ridiculous. The professors all talked about him like he was some sort of suicide risk but the students knew well that he wasn’t. He said he walked into the lake to get some sort of grip on life and they believed him. There was something about the absent way he bandied the words about, like it was a thought he’d ended up voicing without realising it, they believed him. But then, the teachers did have a certain amount of responsibility, he supposed, they had to make sure and not just assume things the way the students had. It made sense, for all that it wasn’t very sensible.

 

Harry had written to him every other day as per the agreement. He didn’t elaborate about his day or what he was doing. Most days Cedric got a scrap of paper saying ‘Still alive’ and the Daily Prophet front page. The owl that Cedric had gotten that very morning though, it held very different words.

 

_ “May the light passing across your threshold bring with it life anew _

_ Blessed be the turning of the wheel as times of darkness grow few _

_ Long grows the day and brings with it spring’s delight _

_ Blessed be the tidings brought to you upon this night” _

 

A proper blessing, the kind Cedric had to look through old books to find. How strange that Harry Potter who had been brought up with muggles would send it to him. From what the other muggleborn students had told him, muggles thought Yule was the time when some fat old man broke into their houses to leave them presents and eat their gingersnaps.

 

“Are you here to celebrate Yule as well?” Cedric asked and the boy smirked. He turned away from them and Fred and George stopped their mucking about to watch the younger boy instead. He walked to the point of confluence, the part that Cedric had spent ages mapping out, using his arithmancy compass to locate the exact point and Cedric wondered how it was possible that this first year knew so instinctively where it was. Then again, he had seen this ‘First year’ perform wandless, wordless magic before. Maybe Cedric shouldn’t be surprised anymore, odd things, shocking things seemed to happen so often around Harry Potter that he might as well throw all his expectations of the boy away. 

 

Harry took a couple of seed like objects from his pocket and pressed them into the ground, covering them with more soil and tracing runes in the dirt. He took out a vial, unstoppered it and dropped a single drop of the opalescent liquid within it, onto the place where he had put the seeds and then stepped back.

 

“Well, well, well-” One of the twins said and the other continued,

 

“What tricks does ickle Potter have up his sleeve?”

 

Cedric opened his mouth to say something when a movement caught his eye and he turned it where the seed had been planted.

 

In front of their eyes, a little sapling grew, growing taller and harder, its green stem turning brown, covered in bark. It grew in girth as well and as it did, the runes that Harry had scribbled into the dirt appeared inscribed on the bark of the tree. Soon it towered over them, it’s shadows dappling over their faces as they looked up to see the moon bright and high in the sky from between its branches.

 

“Merlin!” The twins gasped in unison, and if Cedric was capable of speech he would have concurred. His voice was stuck in his throat and the only sound he could make was a low whimper.

 

“Your log?” Harry asked and Cedric startled. Harry jerked his head towards the tree and Cedric placed the branch they had taken at the base of the massive tree, their contribution to the ritual feeling incredibly tiny in comparison. But the soil where he had placed the branch shifted and it twisted and turned, joining into the newly created tree like a fat burl. Harry made a sound of approval. “That branch is older than all of us combined. It will burn well.”

 

Cedric felt a flush of pride pass through him. Harry raised a hand, and from his palm burst a bright blue flame. The twins gasped as the fire came out in one steady stream, eventually taking the form of a phoenix, winding its way up the tree until every one of it branches was alight. The flames did not grow, did not reach up and turn to sparks the way a bonfire would. It was a soft, gentle flame, exuding warmth. It looked like any other tree with glowing lights wound around it, it was difficult to believe it was on fire.

 

It was  _ beautiful _ . The flames built slowly, first turning the branches to ash,  to be carried away by the wind, then reaching to the very trunk, and then down to the roots, the once sprawling tree that blocked the light, now turned to blackened warm specks suspended in the air. When nothing but a spot of charred earth remained, a wave of magic rose and washed over them. Where the wave on the eve of Samhain had felt like a being swept away by a current, this felt like dipping feet into a lake on a sunny day, the warmth of the sun upon their face.

 

And there, from the charred soil emerged a soft green shoot, unfurling pale green leaves.

 

The wheel was turned.

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did some very superficial research *coughWikipediacough* and found that emancipation of minors in England isn't really done and even in cases where possible, it seems to be expensive and involve a ton of investigations and that Harry would need to be a teen at least, all of which makes it unlikely. Realistically speaking, there's no mention of any identification documents etc being given to the Dursleys along with Harry so I don't even know how legal their guardianship is. Affirming Sirius's guardianship of Harry seems simpler than the rest.
> 
> And while I don't hold with the idea that all muggleborns are from squib lines, the idea that *some* of them are, makes sense, especially if magic recurs in family lines such as Dudley's kid being a wizard (as per my canon) and also in cases like the Creevey brothers.


End file.
